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“What would one person think after finding identical patterns in two, three, four sea pebbles? Yet Nature surrounds us with signs like this, which are so subtle, common and pervasive that we are no more capable to see them.”

plans #01, 2008

plans #02, 2008

plans #03, 2008

Being that these and other artworks (examined on this other article) are exhibited right this month for the first time in the entirety of the complete series, I decided to redact this text as a possible in-depth analysis for the visitors.

plans #04, 2008

plans #05, 2008

plans #06, 2008

To make the meaning of the series “plans” comprehensible, I report here a transcription of what I explained to the visitors during the exhibition vernissage.

Thursday, 28 March 2013

ArcheTipinNaturali - Benna and Alfredo Gioventù

Torre dei Doganieri

Sestri Levante, Italy

These are photographic manipulations where practically I have got the texture present in one stone of these tetrads and I have transferred it on all the others.

Technically that has been the work.

The initial conceptual argumentation lies on posing oneself the question if someone would find four of these equal pebbles, with this equal texture: one would raise doubts on the real randomness of the world and the cosmos. Now, these are signs particularly equal, I say, they are really identical, thus impossible, or virtually impossible to find, it is not excluded, but virtually impossible. However normally we find really many similarities in the living beings, in the human beings, in the flowers: thus they are signs so universal and omnipresent that we can not even see them any more. So I wanted to put them over things in a very impossible way, some stones, to recall to mind this concept, that nature is pervaded by similarity signs, thus there is the design in the cosmos, even if we can not see it any more. The fact to have proposed it in a much more evident way just helps to remember this. That’s all.

The title “plans” is thus meant as project, but also as scheme or program, with an evident reference to the so called DNA, a true code or programming language.

plans #07, 2008

plans #08, 2008

plans #09, 2008

plans #10, 2008

I close this article with some photographs of the evocative site where the exhibition is going on.

A partial view of the exhibition, with my series of “pebble-shaped eggs” beside the “lithograms” and some “floating stones” by Aldredo Gioventù.

A view with the incredibly photorealistic earthenware “floating stones” created by Alfredo Gioventù.

Another view of some “floating stones”.
I am honoured that for this occasion Alfredo has been inspired by the textures of “plans”.

An interior view of the Torre dei Doganieri, where the Artura atelier is sited.

“A selection of thirteen pebbles found on the beach, one for each of the years in which the search have been protracted, ovate in shape but one.”

pebble-shaped eggs, 1999-2011

Being that these and other artworks (examined on this other article) are exhibited right this month for the first time in the entirety of the complete series, I decided to redact this text as a possible in-depth analysis for the visitors.

“pebble-shaped eggs” is a series of thirteen artworks with an evident metaphysical inspiration and an intimist expression that is manifested through a silent atmosphere that has a mystical mark.

pebble-shaped eggs #01

pebble-shaped eggs #05

This is one of the few creations where I have let myself bear away by the unconscious expressionism, with no preconceived conceptual intent. For this reason I am going to draw this a posteriori analysis, recalling those sentiments that impelled me to the realization.

The multiform sea is one of the muses to which I own the most part of my artistic inspirations, fruit of meditations favoured by its expanse on the horizon during the seasons' cycle.

The pleasing relax enjoyed in lengthy instants spent on the beaches where I have found the pebbles, has been the favouring element; but the true reason that led me to translate them into artworks can be found in the very act of the choice to immortalize the lucky finds, that are the result of an accurate selection lasted thirteen years; it may seem banal, but it is not that simple to find pebbles symmetrically and regularly ovate.

That pacificatory enjoyment can be rediscovered also in the photographic artwork “walk and walk”, dating back to 2005 and shown altogether in the same exhibition, which is also bind to the poem “ligurian march”, written in 2006. For this reason I include them in this analysis.

walk and walk, 2005

“ligurian march”, poem, 6 March 2006

walk and walk

in a wadding hush

where infrequent sounds

compel raise from the sand

the sight of they

who look for, slack

some small treasures

cause the sole true one

is the calm that sun gives

pebble-shaped eggs #07

These thirteen “eggs”, symbols of life and regeneration, are a reference to the archetypical mysticism of the numerology existing since the prehistoric civilizations. I chose a configuration of twelve “eggs”, representing the habitual number of months, plus one that represents the imperfection, the astronomical incongruity between that subdivision and the route of Earth around Sun that is travelling by thirteen constellations, among which there is the omitted Ophiuchus, or the Serpentarius, the one who dominates the serpent, identified in the god of medicine Asclepius.

This is not a homage to esotericism: simply I like to make things clear and for this I feel myself absolutely exoteric.

The slightly imperfect thirteenth “egg” (the #7 placed in the composition's centre) represents what is being sacrificed, the divergence that becomes both holocaust and sacrament (to sacrifice: from Latin, to make sacred), both death and resurrection, with an obvious relation to the figure of Christ and the twelve apostles.

For this reason I consider “pebble-shaped eggs” an allegory of “Last Supper”.

I chose to call these artworks “pebble-shaped eggs” instead of the self-evident contrary “egg-shaped pebbles”, to add the concept of our cognitive limitations. The notions assumed with experience become like stones, or Gordian knots, they are complexes that lead us to believe according to preconceptions, while, as I always assert, our experiencing of reality should renovate at every moment.